Character Introduction
In a talk about Kuyperianism, I probably ought to begin with a brief biographical mention of Abraham Kuyper. Just as Calvin helped to nickname a theological position that existed long before he was born, so also Abraham Kuyper did the same. Calvin exalted the sovereignty of God in salvation in the same way that Augustine and the apostle Paul had done before him. So also Abraham Kuyper exalted the lordship of Jesus Christ in every field of human endeavor, in much the same way that . . . Calvin had done centuries before him.
Abraham Kuyper lived as he taught. He was in turns, a minister, a theologian, the founder of a political party, the founder of a university, the founder of a newspaper, the founder of a denomination, and the prime minister of the Netherlands. He was, in short, a tornado in boots. He was an amazing man. I couldn’t drag a rope after him.
Topical Introduction
A friend once commented to me, echoing a theologian he had read, that there are three main currents in the Reformed river. As it turns out, the observation is something of a commonplace. First there are the pietists, to whom personal conversion and the resultant personal devotion is everything. And then there are the confessionalists, the doctrinalists, to whom precise doctrinal conformity to the Canons of Whatsitburg are everything. And the third group would be the Kuyperians, the transformationalists, who believe that every aspect of life needs to be brought under the functional authority of the lordship of Jesus Christ.
It is important to note right at the beginning that these do not represent three isolated emphases. Two of them frequently do, but not all three. An emphasis on personal piety frequently excludes attention to other aspects of worldview Christianity. And a rigid confessionalism often limits itself to those topics addressed by the confessions. But the all-encompassing worldview thinking of Kuyperianism does not exclude personal piety or confessional orthodoxy. How could it? If the lordship of Christ extends over every aspect of human life, we must therefore recognize that our personal devotional behavior is an aspect of human life, as would be our confessional commitments. Kuyperianism, therefore, is the total package . . . depending.
Following Calvin, Not Neo Calvin
But something else is also important to note, and also right at the beginning.
Given the kind of world we live in, the progressive left gets into everything, and this has certainly included Kuyperianism. Since I am going to be loudly praising the Kuyperian train, and urging all of you to get on board, I need to make a distinction first.
By Kuyperianism, I am not referring to the “third-way-above-the-fray” approach taken by Tim Keller and his followers. While he would certainly claim the banner of Kuyper, and would also want to embrace all three currents mentioned earlier, he takes those three in a particular order, and with a peculiar emphasis. For Keller, it is transformationalism first, piety second, and doctrine third. This is actually a photo negative of the order we find in the book of Ephesians, where it is doctrine first, piety second, and transformation third. We begin with the doctrinal emphases of the first three chapters, the doctrines of high Calvinism, and move on to the personal ethics enjoined in chapters 4-6. The end result of all of it is the bride, without any spot or wrinkle, coming down the aisle of chapter 5 transformed. The transformation at the end of the process is entirely dependent on the preliminary work. If the foundation is crooked, the roof line will be crooked.
But what happens to you if you simply start with transformation? Because of the creational nature of man, all work of transformation must proceed from blueprints. And if you have not self-consciously started with the biblical blueprints (doctrine), then you are going to find yourself surreptitiously working from unbiblical blueprints supplied to you by old Slewfoot. And this is why third way-above-the-fray neo-Calvinism is always going to veer into the left ditch—unless it is already there.
And in order to maintain the appearance of balance, they will need to insist upon a moral equivalence between the “racism” they keep hearing about on the right, and the death-cult love affair with abortion and every form of sexual perversion on the left. They will have to greatly amplify every hint of racism until it is an incipient Holocaust, almost on top of us, and then minimize all the alphabet + people. What do I mean by minimize? For example, James Wood, in an appreciative review of Biblical Critical Theory, a 672-page cinder block of a book, designed to help Christians “make sense of modern life and culture,” there is nothing about abortion. Nothing about the sexual revolution. Nothing about the alphabet people. The phrase that Turretin would have used for this kind of stratospheric theorizing is “completely out of touch.”
But how would this comport with the book’s subtitle? “How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.” How on earth are we going to make sense of modern life and culture without reference to our polymorphous orgasmic and androgynous imperative?
Now I realize Kevin DeYoung might not appreciate me quoting him with appreciation, but I am going to do it anyhow.
“Keller has often made use of George Marsden’s observation that the Reformed tradition in America comprises three different priorities or “impulses”: the doctrinalist impulse, which emphasizes the confessions of the church and correct theology; the pietist impulse, which emphasizes right behavior and the internal affections of the heart; and the culturalist impulse, which emphasizes collective action and the external work of the Church to transform society. Keller has acknowledged before that he is a culturalist first, then a pietist, then a doctrinalist. I would say that my order is just the opposite. In fact, if it’s not too doctrinalist of me, I think that sound doctrine is more than an impulse; it is foundational and indispensable for the other two emphases. While I’m at it, I might as well say that I’m not convinced that the culture-transforming agenda belongs to the Church qua Church, nor that it won’t end up being co-opted by an ever-expanding list of “social justice” causes.”
Kevin DeYoung
And yet, do you all remember that time when Princeton gave an award to Keller, and then revoked it because of his (distinctly nuanced and muted) negative stance on homosexuality? The proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy is found in the fact that the award they revoked was the Kuyper Prize.
So because the woke hordes understand that religious commitment is a totalizing affair, there is absolutely no way for a Christian to remain faithful on issues surrounding the sexual revolution and also to remain “above the fray.” Not possible.
Cathedral and Town
Following Calvin, I therefore want to make a distinction between the church and the kingdom. The church proper is the ministry Word and Sacrament. Its primary functions are discharged on the Lord’s Day, as the people of God gather to worship Him. The cathedral at the center of the town is the church. The town is the kingdom. There is traffic and flow between the two, necessarily, but the church of God and the kingdom of God are not synonyms.
In all of this, there necessarily must be a harmonious relationship between the three governments that were established directly by God. Underneath all three of them is the foundational “government” of self-control, which is wrought in us by the Spirit of God through the gospel. Without this self-governance, the balance of form and freedom in the other three governments becomes a radical impossibility. As our second president John Adams once observed, our Constitution presupposes a moral and religious people. It is, he said, wholly unfit for any other.
But assuming this, what happens? When men are forgiven and set upright again, they find themselves functioning within the framework of these three basic governments. By “basic governments,” I am talking about those governmental arrangements established directly by God. This would not include the structure of your quilting club, your book reading group, or any hunting parties you put together. You can structure those by-laws how you like. Those governments are man-made, but the three governments we are talking about here were created by God directly. He writes the by-laws.
The first God-ordained government is the government of the family, following the order that God has established. The husband is the head, his wife is his body and the executive, and together they shepherd their little ones. So don’t treat your wife like she was a conservative airhead, and then proudly say, “And to her I have entrusted the education of all my sons!” The family is the Ministry of Health, Education, and Welfare.
The second is the civil magistrate, which is the Ministry of Justice. Their task is to make it possible for you to walk across town safely at 2 in the morning. And justice here is defined by the Bible, and not by the hurt feelings of somebody.
The church is the Ministry of Grace and Peace, who is the Holy Spirit Himself.
But what is the relationship of the three governments to one another? These are Kuyperian spheres that operate in the context of the kingdom. In God’s order, not one of the three is permitted to domineer over the others. Each has its assigned task, and each one needs to tend to its own knitting. The church does not declare war, or collect the trash. The family does not administer the sacraments. The state does not review cases of church discipline. And not one of these spheres is dependent on any of the others for its existence.
Now in times of extreme crisis, as when Rome was threatened by the Lombards, one government may pick up some of the responsibilities of another. Say there is a failed state, but the church is still present. Or in other unusual circumstances, it may be the same way, as when Paul prohibits Christians filing civil suits against one another before unbelieving judges (1 Cor. 6:1-7). Ordinarily, the church ought not to be adjudicating property line disputes, but we should prefer that to the scandal of asking pagans to define justice between two believers.
But with that said, there is definitely a hierarchy of honor in this glorious and eschatological fulfillment. And this is what it looks like. The church does not fill up the world, and the church does not turn every day into Sunday. But the knowledge of the Lord does fill up the world, as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). How does this work? In Scripture, remember the flow in two directions. The living water flows from the church out to all the families and nations of men, and all the families and nations of men flow back to the church. But they don’t stream to the church in order to live there. They don’t come into the church to establish permanent residency. They come to eat from the tree of life, and then they go back out again with a benediction, with the peace of Christ upon their heads.
So picture it this way. The worship of God is central to all of life, but it does not devour all of life. It is the axle, not the wheel. The sun does not burn everything up, but it does give light to everything. The water does not flood the world, but it does irrigate the entire world. The anchor fastens the ship, the ship does not turn into a gigantic anchor. The cathedral is at the center of the town, but does not “take over” all the activities of the townspeople—their printing, their auto mechanics, their software designing, their lawn mowing. In one sense all of that is none of the church’s business. But at the same time the church instructs the townspeople in the adverbs—how these things are to be done, meaning, honestly, before the Lord, with one eye always on the text, and with a hard work ethic.
The church is therefore at the center of the kingdom, but the church and the kingdom are still very different. You can see the cathedral spire from every part of town.
The Restroom Test
So the authority of Jesus—the kind of authority that is granted to a sacrificial king—is an authority that mediates the kindness of the Father, and He mediates that kindness with the center fixed and all the edges in play. The church teaches you how to be a father, but does not take over the role of a father. The church instructs the magistrate, but does not rival the magistrate. The church teaches wives to submit to their husbands, and models that submission through dutiful and cheerful submission to the authority of Christ as found in the Scriptures.
Reflecting Christ, the church suffuses all of life, the way sunlight fills up the day. It does not displace ordinary life, the way one billiard ball displaces another. Rather, it informs and instructs ordinary life—wherever you are in the town, out in the kingdom, whatever you are doing, whether changing a tire or changing a diaper, you can turn around and look, and from that place you can see the church spire. Everything is calibrated by that. Everything is oriented. And whenever you do, whatever you are doing, you are reminded that you are part of the Bride, the wife of the Lamb
But returning to an earlier point, a problem has been caused by Abraham Kuyper’s success and subsequent influence, in that Kuyperian is now generally taken as a term of praise in Reformed circles, and not a term of abuse. As a term of praise, this means that everybody wants it, and this has resulted in a number of pietists and doctrinalists who think they are Kuyperian but who are not at all. Wouldn’t it be nice to be Kuyperian is not the same thing as actually engaging the world at every point.
True Kuyperian practice is not to go out into the world and do pretty much what everybody else is doing, only with a Jesus label attached. “Anything the world can do, we can do five years later and worse” is not Kuyperian. This is not the lordship of Christ — rather it is Christians getting into the manufacture of knock-offs. If something gets popular in the world, the Christians are right there with a competing model made with cheap labor in a Third World factory and using a lot more plastic.
In order for the Kuyperian spheres to be rightly related to one another, it is necessary for all of them to be rightly related to worship, a worship of God that is at the center. In the first place, this means worship on the Lord’s Day, and in the second place, worship in other settings—like chapel at seminary.
So as seminaries vie for the privilege of instructing the next generation of Kuyperian ministers, how might you decide which one would do a good job of it? One of the things you can do if you are dubious about a restaurant is to simply walk in and take a look at one of their restrooms. Depending on the conditions there, you can go on to look at other things—the menu, the prices, the service, etc. But an appalling restroom ought to be a deal-breaker. Using a similar approach, take a grand tour of all the Reformed seminaries in the United States. Do not sit in on classes, or visit the bookstore, or examine the curriculum, at least not at first. Just make sure you hit the chapel service. Sit there and ask yourself if you want this to be the future of the Reformed world. Are they singing “Jesus is my girlfriend” music? Is the worship inane? Is the message God-honoring? Is the overall demeanor breezy and casual, with shorts and flip-flops abounding? Is this what “reverence and godly awe” mean to them?
And the chances are, if you get in a conversation with someone about this, and you raise the point, the defense will be to retreat to their true justification for carrying the Reformed mantle, and it will either be a tight doctrinal defense (“the Heidelberg doesn’t say we can’t worship this way”), or it will be a love and good works defense (“our students volunteer in evangelistic outreach and numerous crisis pregnancy centers”). And this is nothing against doctrinal precision or active evangelism and social engagement. The Kuyperian approach includes these, and does so robustly. But the Kuyperian approach never justifies a glaring lack in one place by pointing out another place where the lack is not so evident. You can’t defend yourself against a charge of stealing something by pointing out all the houses in town you didn’t burn down.
One other thing. I am not saying that all Reformed seminaries have atrocious chapel services, any more than I am saying that every restaurant in town has a filthy restroom. I am just saying that what they are doing in their chapel service matters, and tells you a whole lot more than anything else you might look at there.
And to Conclude
So let me conclude with a quote from Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism, one that addresses the great crisis of our day, which is the fecklessness of our cultural, political, and ecclesiastical leadership. Kuyper is quoting from Calvin’s commentary on Samuel.
“And ye, O peoples, to whom God gave the liberty to choose your own magistrates, see to it, that ye do not forfeit this favor, by electing to the positions of highest honor, rascals and enemies of God.”
One of the temptations to folly that falls out of the notion that American liberty is a unique thing in the world is the idea that the threats to that liberty that we are currently facing are also unique. Because of this, we don’t look to God’s Word for wisdom in how to deal with it. We think our temptation is a singularity. We don’t look to history to see how it has been dealt in the past—but it has been dealt with repeatedly in the past.
Blessings and curses are always binary. There is always a mountain of blessing to the right and a mount of curses to the left. There have always been scoundrels and fools ready to assemble in the king’s court, and there has always been God’s requirement for kings to look for good men who are ready to help banish the greasy climbers. This was true prior to 1776, and it has been true ever since that time.
For century after century, many nations have experienced the heavy hand of tyranny and mismanagement. For century after century, many other nations have been responsibly governed, and have enjoyed the blessings of liberty for a time. This is the kind of general truth that can be described in a proverb. “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” (Prov. 29:2). This is generally true — just look around. Read a book.
We are in a period of mourning right now, and this is so because the wicked are currently in control. Yeats nailed it—the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. But lest we blame the scoundrels inside the Beltway, as though that were where the problem arose, the wicked bear rule here in a nation that holds orderly elections every two years. We choose these people, which means that we are ignoring (to our peril) the pointed warning that Calvin gave. What happens to a people who use this favor from God—free and untrammeled elections—in order to bestow the highest honors on skunks, graspers, thieves, grifters, blackguards, miscreants, villains and stinkers? Such a people lose their liberty to choose their own leaders, and given how they were using that liberty, that constitutes no great loss.
The United States is only a nation, and we are experiencing no temptations except those that are common to man. And there is a way of escape. Stop supporting a regime run by airbrushed mountebanks. There, I said it. I am clearly spinning out of control, and had better conclude.